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Tempers flare year-round for sports fans, but emotions reach a new height when March Madness is underway.
The fast-paced tournament flips brackets on their heads, and heartbreaking losses happen by the hour, but college basketball heads still tend to enter bracketology with their hearts and not their heads.
That’s precisely what happened during CBS’ coverage of the tourney on Friday, March 21, between Inside The NBA cohosts Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith as the two former players filled out their brackets. Smith picked his 14th-ranked alma mater, the University Of North Carolina UNC.
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“Are you serious?” Barkley asked. “Are you serious? Y’all make fun of me for being unbiased.”
“Listen, I don’t lie about being biased,” Smith responded.
Barkley reiterated that they’re not supposed to show favoritism when it comes to their picks, but Smith refuted this.
“What are we, Fox News? What are we, Fox News, in here now? This ain’t Fox News. You don’t have to repeat everything the idiots say every day,” Barkley adds.
An amused Ernie Johnson hops in to play referee during the hilarious moment and goes to commercial, telling viewers that the second half of the game is coming up.
Barkley’s comments shouldn’t come as a surprise, as his commentary is often off the cuff. During the same broadcast, he surprised Johnson by actually listening to a producer’s request to wrap up the segment.
“For the first time in his career, Charles Barkley has listened to what a producer’s had to say,” Johnson quipped.
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As March Madness kicked off, his cohorts also roastingly criticized him for being an overweight point guard in high school. Barkley jokingly got on the defense, accusing them of bullying him and claiming he wanted CBS’ Human resources department to step in.
CBS’ entertaining converge is led by the Inside the NBA crew rounded out by Clark Kellogg, Adam Lefkoe, Jay Wright, Candace Parker, Seth Davis, Adam Zucker, Wally Szczerbiak and Jamie Erdahl
But see how social media reacted to the crew bringing their vibes to the high-stakes March Madness coverage below.